Comparison of Naming Performance according to Word Frequency and Cue Types between Healthy Elderly Adults and Individuals with Dementia of Alzheimer’s Type

Objectives: Naming tasks are widely used to assess semantic memory and word retrieval abilities, and are considered a sensitive tool for detecting lexical deficits in Dementia of Alzheimer’s Type (DAT). This study aimed to compare naming performance between healthy elderly adults and individuals with DAT, focusing on the effects of word frequency and cue type. In addition, response times and error patterns were analyzed to provide a more detailed understanding of lexical retrieval processes in both groups.Methods: Participants included 54 elderly adults (27 healthy and 27 with DAT). A picture naming task was administered, consisting of high- and low-frequency words. When participants failed to respond correctly, semantic or phonological cues were provided. Accuracy, response time, and error types were systematically analyzed.Results: Healthy elderly adults showed significantly higher accuracy and shorter response times than individuals with DAT. Both groups performed better on high-frequency words than on low-frequency words. After semantic cueing, healthy elderly adults exhibited greater performance improvement compared to the DAT group, whereas no significant group difference emerged after phonological cueing. In terms of error types, the DAT group produced a higher proportion of no-response errors, while both groups frequently exhibited semantic and visual errors.Conclusion: The findings highlight distinct lexical retrieval difficulties in DAT, particularly in the use of semantic cues and the tendency toward no-response errors. These results suggest that naming tasks can provide valuable clinical information for early detection of DAT and inform intervention strategies tailored to cueing methods.